Hello, this is Cristi. In this video I will show you in Descript how to apply Chroma
Key, how to remove your background if you are using a green screen. And this is a very
simple effect and it's been added a while ago in Descript storyboard as a visual, as
a video effect. So here's how to do this.
I have a video here recorded. It's got multiple tracks, but it doesn't matter. It also works
if your video is just your video from your camera. But it's important that you have a
green screen or a blue screen, or any kind of other color that you need. You can apply
the color you want. So my video is here.
You can see I painted my wall green because it was never large enough. Behind me. So my
wall is green, it's got different shades of green. It's got a little dark in the corner
there and depending on how the light is coming. So how do I apply green screen in Descript?
I'm going to delete the screen recording because I don't need this right now.
So this is how you do it. You can go to the video, you select that layer, and on the right
hand side bar, you can see some of the effects in here. The effects. For video are off, so
you can click plus to add an effect. You have a bunch of effects in here, but one of them
is chroma key, and this is what it does.
It applies a key color and it makes that color transparent on your video. If I click on this
right now, My background disappears. The reason is because Descript uses the green color by
default. So it happens that my background is green and it gets removed, but you can
actually change that color. So let's suppose that my background wasn't green.
Maybe it was blue or red. You can click on the chroma key effect in here and look, this
is the color it's using. It's a little far from my green. This is one thing that I don't
really like is that Descript has quite a high tolerance to the different hues. In fact,
I actually tried to apply chroma key to something that was clearly a very.
Very distinct color and I couldn't get it to work. I don't know why. Maybe it's improved
lately. So if you click on this color here, you can change it to a different color. Maybe
red. So my shirt is red look, I disappeared. My face isn't red, but my face disappeared.
Two and portions of the background also disappeared.
So if you want to change that, you have this similarity here. I can actually move this
in the way. So you have similarity here, which tells Descript how many other colors around
or near or in the same. How similar should be the colors to replace? So if you turn this
down, Descript is going to get less colors.
If you turn it up, it's going to be more, you know, relaxed with the colors it gets.
So if I say I'm going to switch to green, I can go back to green here, and most of my
green is gone because this green is not so similar to mine. But if I click on this one
and then I go to the similarity and turn it up. You should see how the hues of green disappear.
So you have to kind of find the right balance and you have to have even lighting in your
background, but most importantly, the green screen or whatever background you're using
in your video has to be different enough from everything else to avoid having those. Other
things taken out. If I go similarity, you know, I mean the entire image go goes away
because it's not even green.
But my similarity is so high that it actually removes most of my video. And in fact, if
I go to a hundred percent, like everything's gone. So you have to find the right balance
because of this, and also look at the smoothness. So that's going to kind of make the edges
smoother. If I zoom in here, you can see what's going on.
If I make this video larger, you can see now that the edges are kind of smooth, you know,
so they are very sharp now and similarity up. There you go. So if the smoothest is all
the way down, that video may appear with jagged edges. So you have to kind of maybe smooth
it a little bit, but don't smooth it too much because then it becomes, you know, bleeds
into the other colors.
So it's a little tricky to get it right and if you don't have good lighting and good contrast,
maybe. The other effect is going to help you. And the other effect is called Green screen.
Not a very inventive name. Anyway, green screen is actually a second effect you can apply
in Descript. Let me take the chroma key off.
In fact, I'm going to remove it all together. I. The other effect that allows you to remove
the background is the green screen effect, which is an AI effect. Okay, so DCR detects,
you know, kind of the shape of your body and you kind of have to be like from the bust
up and so on to remove the background. This one should not require a green screen.
How do you do this? Go to effects. Again, click plus and let's find the green screen
effect right there. And this is an AI effect, which means I've already applied it on my
video, but if you apply it for the first time on a video, you have to wait a few minutes
for the cloud. To apply it because this processing happens in the cloud.
So Descript needs to send your video to the cloud and bring back a version without this
effect, you know, with the effect applied to it with an Alpha channel. So as you can
see on this one, the AI will remove everything else that it doesn't consider part of your
body. And in fact, it removed my microphone as you can see it here.
And of course, this effect doesn't have any options. It's either on or off. Let's see
how it works. If I put an object behind me, let's say a rectangle with a very contrasty
color, maybe I'll use something like blue. Okay, so I'm going to move this to the back.
So layer order sent to back. Here we go. So you can see now I actually lost this portion
here, which is part of my, it's my microphone, which the other effect didn't.
Okay, so if I move this around and if I turn off the green screen, look, my microphone
is there. If I add the other effect, by the way, if I click plus and apply chroma key,
the chroma key will leave my microphone alone because my microphone isn't, you know, it,
it's not part of my body, but it's also not green, so it leaves it alone.
So if you're in a, in a bind, you can probably try applying both. But if you apply the green
screen, you're going to lose anything else that doesn't appear to be part of your body.
So, depends. If you're doing a talking head in a circle, that's enough because you know
you're focusing on your face here and nobody cares about the microphone at the bottom.
Otherwise, I'll probably just turn off that one and just use chroma key because you know,
I, I don't want to have this big hole in my body right there. Okay, so this is how you
apply two effects, two ways to remove your background in Descript. If you have a green
screen, I recommend you do a good lighting and establish very good contrast so that you
can safely remove it.
With the green screen, and one thing I forgot to mention in the chroma key, in the chroma
key effect, if it's not green, you can click and choose here and use a color picker, right?
So if I switch to blue, which is obviously not part of my picture, but if your green
screen doesn't get. Within that default range of green, you can then click on this color
picker here and choose the exact green that you have.
And look, I mean, it loses everything because my green is way too similar. So you probably
need to turn the similarity down quite a bit like this, you see? So that's kind of my green
screen. I should probably have picked a lighter green. So if I go in here and I choose a lighter
green, then you know, look the darker one stays in.
So then I can play with the similarity a little more and lose all of that. Just getting the
right balance in there. So there you go. This is how you apply these effects. You can put
your video on top of other stuff. Now you can put text behind your video, you know,
do all sorts of stuff. If the green screen works fine for you.
For the AI based green screen works fine as well. Then you have a bunch of options. Thank
you for watching. If you enjoyed this video, please feel free to subscribe and like it.
And then if you are still learning Descript now and you're finding it difficult, you can
get my Descript course. I created a Descript storyboard course with the newer version,
and I also provide one-on-one coaching.
So if you need any help, check in the description for the links, and I hope to see you soon,
maybe in a coaching session. Thank you so much, and I will see you in the next one.